With a roar, Caersan attacks the Ra’haam as it brings down his son, but for every vine he hacks away, another takes its place. He knows no victory lies this way. I can feel it.
“Fight!” he screams, and I don’t know who he’s talking to anymore. He swings his blade again, unable to surrender, refusing to let go.
“Caersan!” I cry. “This is not the fight! Heal the Neridaa with me!”
And he looks up, his face splintered and cracked, the light almost blinding …
—and then he stands in the Echo with me in a field of crystal flowers, and once more I’m in two worlds, three worlds, four worlds, so many times and places …
—a boy tries to understand why his father is angry
—the boy’s son tries to understand why his father is angry
—“Imagine what we could have made, if only you had loved us.”
—“My son, I …”
—the flowers shatter one by one … and then they are still …
… and everything is still …
And in both worlds—beside me in the Echo and beside Kal on the floor—he raises his voice to roar his defiance to the Ra’haam:
“YOU WILL NEVER WIN!”
and the Starslayer shatters into a million pieces, spending every piece of himself in his defiance, in his absolute refusal to surrender
and all around him the Ra’haam burns black and red, shriveling and curling in on itself
and within the Echo, he is everywhere, infusing the place with his energy as it knits back together and becomes beautiful
and he infuses me with his energy, and I am powerful, I am infinite
and for a moment I know him completely, and then he is gone, but in the roaring silence the instant after his departure
I know he killed billions.
And I know he can never be forgiven.
And I know that he has spent the last of his life force in a tangled, furious stab made up of defiance, a refusal to concede defeat, an act of anger and iron-willed resolve …
… and yes, of love.
Kal lies gasping on the floor, surrounded by the burned and blackened remains of the Ra’haam, and I stagger to him, dropping to my knees, and he closes his eyes against the glow from my face, but he reaches up to throw his arms around me and I wrap my mind around Kal’s to brace him, and I say
I love you
I love you
I love you
and I’m not completely sure who’s speaking in that moment, and I harness the power of Caersan’s that still runs through me, and feel Kal’s warmth inside me, and
light
shines
from
me
as
I—
34
TYLER
“You certainly have a flair for the dramatic, legionnaire.”
I open my eye. Gray walls around me. Pale light above me. A figure is silhouetted against it, broad-shouldered, thick-necked. The metal on his chest and cybernetic arms gleams dully, and his voice is a low, rumbling growl.
“Admiral Adams … ,” I whisper.
I’m in the academy med station, I realize. The same bay I was in the day I first met Aurora O’Malley. For a moment, I almost want to turn my head to see if she’s on the other side of the wall, just waking up.
Monitors and machines hiss and hum around me, pulsing with a steady, warm glow. I’m mostly numb from the neck down, wondering why the world looks so strange. Bringing my trembling hand up to my face, I feel a thick derm patch across my cheek, over my right brow.
“You lost it,” Adams says. “The eye. Lost your spleen too. The shot missed your spine by about two centimeters. You’re lucky to be breathing.”
“When it keeps happening over and over,” I whisper, “it’s not luck.”
The admiral scoffs. “Never could quite cure you of that ego, Jones. Just like your old man.” He reaches down, presses one heavy metal hand on my shoulder. “He’d be proud of you, son. Just like I am.”
“Yeah, real proud. Galactic terrorist. Traitor to Aurora Legion. Space pirate.” My fingers run over the place my eye used to be, the ache in my hollow socket. “At least I’ll look the part for my firing squad, I guess.”
“Won’t be a firing squad. What you did is all over the feeds. Your friend Lyrann Balkarri has been crowing about you saving the summit single-handed on GNN-7 for three days now. Promising an exclusive interview.” He grunts appreciatively. “Hidden camera on the jacket lapel. Smart.”
“I just w-wanted a record.” I wince, a sliver of pain breaking through the haze of meds. “Something to speak f-for me if things went b-bad. Clear my name.” I look up at Adams and shrug. “Dad’s name. You know.”
“I know,” he says. “I know, Tyler.”
He straightens up, nods to the bank of monitors arrayed on the wall.
“The footage makes for some dramatic viewing, I’ll give you that. Good headline, too. Terror Plot to Destroy Aurora Station Foiled by Rogue Legionnaire. Your story almost upstaged ours. But not quite.”
I focus on the screens, the butterflies in my stomach fighting to be felt through the pain-blockers they’ve pumped me full of. On the monitors, I can see images of Adams and de Stoy giving their presentation to the Galactic Summit. In the holo behind them, I see the image of Octavia—the colony world engulfed by the Ra’haam, then subsequently locked under Interdiction by order of TerraGov. On other screens, I see different planets, also crawling with the bluegreen corruption of the enemy.
The other nursery worlds, I realize.
Adams and de Stoy told the summit about the Ra’haam.
Another screen shows footage of legionnaires subduing and arresting the GIA agents in Prime Minister Ilyasova’s retinue. I see mirrormasks being ripped from faces sheened with blue-gray moss, eyes like flowers, outrage and fear and shock. Headlines like GIA Infiltrated, TerraGov Suspect, Senatorial Commission.
“You knew,” I whisper.
I meet his eyes, anger boiling in my belly, voice shaking.
“This whole time. You knew.”
“Some of it,” he replies, sighing. “Not enough.”
“You knew enough to put Auri on my Longbow. To plant those packages for us on Emerald City. To leave us the Zero. Which means you knew what was going to happen to Cat when we went to Octavia.” Tears are burning in my eye now, the heart monitor rising in pitch as I try to claw my way upright. “You knew what would happen to her. You knew it’d take her.”
He holds my stare, his jaw clenched. “We did.”
“You sonofabitch,” I hiss.
“You’re owed an apology, Tyler,” he sighs. “And an explanation. But I can only offer the first. The second falls to someone else.”
He reaches into the jacket of his dress uniform, and all those accolades and commendations on his chest that I once coveted just look bought with blood now. I try to imagine if there’s anything he can say, any explanation he can possibly give to make me forget the hurt in Cat’s eyes as that knife sank home, the warmth of her blood on my hands, the horror and sorrow… .
Adams places a small, round holoplayer on the sheet covering my lap, presses a button. The image flickers to life, projected above the player’s lens in glowing light. It’s odd, rendered in lines of duochrome blue and white.